Mallika Sarabhai: The louder the drums of religion and ritual, the farther the sight of the spiritual

Nature is spiritual and feminine, she is shakti

The Asian Age Ocober 13, 2008 Op-Ed

The louder the drums of religion and ritual, the farther the sight of the spiritual.

My first experience came at the end of a personal crisis. I had been going for healings for a suspected brain tumour to a Phillippine physicist-turned-faith healer. The sessions made me cry — old hurts, unknown angst, whatever. After one of the sessions, I was walking in my garden and the sky was so beautiful that I raised my arms, opening them to the world. And I became an open vessel through which I could see light and energy channelling through and going into the earth — I was an upturned wine glass-shaped receptacle. Some years later I danced with my mother for the first time, both of us playing Meera, she the inner face, and I the outer. And I felt myself floating above the stage, looking down at two bodies, convinced we were one being.

Nature is spiritual to me, and nature is feminine. She is shakti, my personal shakti. I light a lamp every morning and try to bring a stillness to my world and my thoughts, feelings and concerns, to get back in touch with the stillness from where all my frenetic energies flow. It is that shunya that is my trigger and my space to take a deep breath.

I find myself turning to that inner me/shakti/space at strange times; in times of great gratitude for being alive, and the realisation of being a channel through which others can be helped, given a hand; when I experience great beauty as in music; when I am losing my resolve to fight for what to me is the truth; when my dog comes and lays her head on my lap and looks at me with such trust that my breath catches; and of course when I need all my faculties to be concentrated to find solutions to difficult or painful situations.

Places of religion, in general, revulse me, as does the behaviour of people there, devotees and God-dalals alike.

The closest I have been to finding beauty and serenity in a place of worship is in some old churches and cathedrals in Europe, filled with haunting music.

But I cherish my few seconds of inwarding every day.

— Mallika Sarabhai is a well-known classical dancer

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